Voice actor Brian Hadford, better known for voicing V in Devil May Cry 5, whipped fans into a frenzy yesterday after tweeting about the “next #CapcomVS game”. While the tweet could be interpreted in several different ways, many assumed it was hinting at a new title. After all, Capcom has had some outstanding crossover fighters in its history – why wouldn’t fans get excited?

Hadford issued a follow-up tweet, however, and noted that he has “NO KNOWLEDGE of any new Capcom games or the potential of what any of their games may entail. This tweet was about me being a big fan & seeing an Instagram ad about Capcom characters. Again, please understand, I am in no way teasing or revealing info.”

Hadford’s clarification doesn’t necessarily mean a new Capcom Vs title isn’t in development. However, if people assumed that it could be revealed soon, then this follow-up removes any possibility. Then again, if Marvel vs. Capcom 2 managed to get into EVO 2020 after years of fan requests, maybe there’s hope yet for a sequel.

The last major Capcom VS title was Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, which released in September 2017 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. It faced a number of criticisms at launch for its gameplay, limited roster and shabby presentation. Several updates since released have helped to improve it, though it’s still considered on the lower end of Capcom’s best.

Let me be 100% clear, I have NO KNOWLEDGE of any new Capcom games or the potential of what any of their games may entail. This tweet was about me being a big fan & seeing an Instagram ad about Capcom characters. Again, please understand, I am in no way teasing or revealing info. https://t.co/9nO3sW823k

— Brian Hanford △⃒⃘ (@brihanford) February 16, 2020

GENICHIRO ASHINA – TUTORIAL FIGHT (SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE)

Basically every boss fight in Sekiro can be a hopeless one depending on what kind of a player you are, but the tutorial boss fight against Genichiro Ashina in the opening minutes of the game is actually hopeless. It’s designed as a super-tough encounter, so the average player simply cannot get past it, and losing the fight leads to a a story cutscene where the Wolf’s arm gets cut off. It is technically possible to defeat Genichiro in this encounter, but all this does is give you a slightly altered cutscene, where your arm still ends up getting cut off.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

For all the credit that Grand Theft Auto games get, it’s easy to forget some of the major bugs in early titles like Vice City. In launch copies, there was a nasty bug during the Ice Cream Factory mission. If you tried to save during the mission, the save data would become corrupted, requiring you to start from the game’s beginning. This was fixed for subsequent copies of the game but that feeling of losing progress, any kind of progress, was still a bummer.

The lineup of games joining Xbox Game Pass over the next couple of weeks is an excellent one that is bound to get a lot of people excited. Microsoft have announced that the heavy hitting lineup includes Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, Vampyr, The Walking Dead: Michonne, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Operencia: The Stolen Sun.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is an excellent RPG and a great follow up to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Though the 2016 title received some criticism for a lacklustre ending, the game is, by and large, a memorable and crisply developed experience. Meanwhile, What Remains of Edith Finch is perhaps one of the best adventure games around at the moment, telling a moving story through very effective means.

Dontnod Entertainment’s Vampyr is the studio’s first crack at a narrative-focused, choice-driven RPG, and though it’s a little rough around the edges, it’s still a fascinating game that does manage to overcome its flaws. Marvel vs Capcom Infinite isn’t the best game in the series by any means, but it’s still a solid fighter- especially if you’re getting it for the low, low price of free.

Operencia: The Stolen Sun, meanwhile, is Zen Studios’ upcoming dungeon crawling turn based RPG, which is due out for release on the Xbox One on March 29- it’ll be joining the Game Pass catalog as well, on the day of its release itself. There’s also The Walking Dead: Michonne, a by and large forgettable and largely disappointing interlude entry in Telltale’s otherwise solid episodic graphic adventure series. Though it has its issues, people invested in the series will still find some amount of enjoyment in it.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and What Remains of Edith Finch both join the Game Pass catalog tomorrow, on March 21, followed by The Walking Dead: Michonne and Vampyr on March 28. Marvel vs Capcom Infinite arrives on April 1st.

Knuckles – Sonic Boom

Take Knuckles, Sonic’s nemesis and beloved cool guy of gaming. What if Sega made him into an over-buff (but skinny-legged) muscle brain? For as annoying as Sonic’s rework was in Sonic Boom, Knuckles was way more baffling. Even worse is that his character is little more than a “dumb jock,” with oddly intellectual viewpoints in the animated series because it’s randomly funny or something.

Capcom has actually been one of the few enthusiastic third party supporters of Microsoft’s store on Windows 10, and their UWP initiative- notably, last year, the Windows Store version of Resident Evil 7 was Play Anywhere with the Xbox One version of the game (and vice versa). To their credit, they have added another major game to that list.

The Windows Store listing for Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, the troubled newest entry in the beloved, fan favorite crossover fighting game franchise, has been updated to reflect its new status as a Play Anywhere game- simply put, this means that if you buy the Windows 10 version, you get the Xbox One version for free (and vice versa). The price of the game has also been reduced from $60 to $40. Maybe that will induce you to purchase the game, sales for which have been rather sluggish so far.

Marvel vs Capcom Infinite is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Today,Capcom revealed their financial performance for the nine months that ended on December 31, 2017. While sales have decreased a bit as compared to the previous year, both ordinary income and operating income have increased. The increased income has been attributed to the growth of digital content business. In their press release, Capcom discussed that there has been a “major growth” of home consoles such as PS4 and Nintendo Switch and thanks to this, they have been able to ship more game home video games. Additionally, Capcom is also looking for market growth in the eSports area due to the rising popularity of eSports.

In the past year, a number of games have performed significantly well for the company. They have reported strong sales for titles including Resident Evil 7 biohazard, Monster Hunter XX, and Ultra Street Fighter II. On the other hand, the performance of Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite was described to be “soft”. While Resident Evil 7 biohazard shipped 4.8 million units during the nine month period, Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite shipped only 1 million units since its release in September, 2017.

Overall it had been quite a good year for Capcom. For this year, Monster Hunter: World  has performed well and we’ll have to wait and see just how much more successful it ends up being.

Lawbreakers

In a way, you have to feel bad for Lawbreakers. This was Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski’s return to the games industry after a long sabbatical. It was supposed to be the perfect union of hero shooter and arena shooter. Sadly, Lawbreakers was handicapped out of the gate with a market dominated by Overwatch. The actual game had a paucity of content with poor matchmaking and weird balance issues. Of course, the high skill ceiling, lack of personality to its heroes and outright lameness didn’t help either.

Star Wars Battlefront 2

On the surface, it seemed like Electronic Arts had learned its lesson with the first Star Wars Battlefront. People don’t like expansion passes? They’re gone! People want a campaign? They get it and you get to play as the Empire! More maps, proper class loadouts, space battles – it almost seemed like a dream come true. Of course, in true EA fashion, it turned into a nightmare. The campaign was barely worth experiencing. The game’s loot boxes completely ruined progression, leaving the min-maxing of loadouts to random luck of the draw.

Friday The 13th: The Video Game

Friday The 13^th: The Video Game suffered from many of the same expectations as Star Wars Battlefront but on a smaller scale. It was the first time we’d get to properly play as Jason Voorhees. With an asymmetrical multiplayer approach, everything seemed like it was on track even with some delays. Sadly, the actual game was riddled with bugs and server issues that made it nigh unplayable at launch. Though such issues were resolved later, Friday The 13^th: The Video Game was still just a fairly okay game and not the murder-a-thon we expected.

Mass Effect Andromeda

Mass Effect Andromeda was doomed from the EA Access trial with horrible facial animations, poorly written dialogue, glitches, an odd set-up and strange design choices. The full game was worse with severe performance issues, game breaking bugs and glitches, a total waste of a new setting, the squandering of any potential that the premise could have had and don’t even get us started on the co-op multiplayer mode. Mass Effect Andromeda’s combat was up to snuff but everything else makes us think that the series died just so we could have an amazing year of games. Was it worth it? Hmm.

Marvel vs Capcom Infinite

A hilariously bad story mode, low-rent roster, lack of additional features, idiotic new mechanics and terrible graphics – at this rate, you’d wonder why we had any expectations from Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. Well, this was the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and to a series that we thought was generally dead and gone. To think that we went from “Take you for a ride!” to this nonsense is just sad.

Need for Speed: Payback

Electronic Arts just couldn’t catch a break in 2017. It’s not like we had too much to hope for Need for Speed Payback until its reveal. Over the months, we thought its open world approach, introduction of Heists and three playable characters might finally offer something cool. Expectations were tempered to say the least. Unfortunately, as with Star Wars Battlefront 2, EA ruined it with Speed Cards that could be earned either in-game or with microtransactions. Again, it’s not like the game is suddenly better without microtransactions – customizing your vehicle this way is simply asinine and completely up to RNG. The story was horrendous, the open world didn’t offer much by way of fulfilling gameplay and for an industry that needs microtransactions to fund triple A development, Payback didn’t look particularly good either.

Sonic Forces

When Sonic Forces was first announced, there was cautious optimism. A sequel to Sonic Generations with some kind of war setting? Hurray-ish. Then it was revealed that Sonic would be working alongside all his critter friends. Then all his past enemies appeared as well. And for some reason, Sega thought to throw a customizable avatar. All these bells and whistles aside, Sonic Forces takes everything Generations did right with its gameplay and messes it up. Present Sonic is meh and the Avatar levels are boring. The experience is underwhelming at best and disappointingly idiotic at worst.

NBA 2K18

NBA 2K titles used to walk a fine line between love and hate. Virtual Currency has been an epidemic for a while but the games were generally well built on the basis of their gameplay and campaign. NBA 2K18 looked like it would be even better with its Playgrounds and Career mode and whatnot. Then, like most everything else this year, it was ruined with microtransactions. Customization options are severely gated by Virtual Currency and the game would reward very little of it, pushing you towards microtransactions even more. What could have been a great game is ultimately a decent one that demands way too much money from you past the initial $60.

WWE 2K18

Visual Concepts and Yuke’s haven’t really given us much in terms of quality wrestling for the past few years but past WWE 2K games were at least somewhat decent. WWE 2K18 beats that streak, mixing in a number of amazingly stupid glitches along with a nonsensical MyCareer mode. Though the loot boxes included aren’t purchased with real money, they still severely limit customization and lean towards RNG luck than any kind of actual freedom. This year’s iteration is the best-looking yet but that can only get you so far when everything else is so fundamentally bad.

Styx: Shards of Darkness

Styx: Master of Shadows wasn’t exactly the next Assassin’s Creed (which doesn’t mean much since the current Assassin’s Creed is so different). However, it offered a nice little offbeat fantasy stealth adventure that players could sink their teeth into. Styx: Shards of Darkness sadly failed to build on that. Level design was better this time around but instead of paying homage to the old-school while streamlining gameplay elements, the game stubbornly stuck to it. Stealth is very easy to cheese, which makes you wonder what the point even is and the humour just doesn’t click.

Winner: Star Wars Battlefront 2

It started with the realization that Star Cards could upset the balance of gameplay in multiplayer. Fans were irate that a $60 release introduced pay to win elements. Naturally, DICE responded and promised changes. However, once Star Wars Battlefront 2 hit the early trial stage, the costs of various heroes proved to be the tipping point. The “sense of pride and accomplishment” comment by EA’s community management team became the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. It eventually snowballed into microtransactions being removed and EA experiencing severe falls in its stock prices.

But that’s not what made Star Wars Battlefront 2 a disappointment. It’s the fact that the campaign is a few hours long and fails to deliver on its promise of an Empire state of view. It’s the fact that the multiplayer would suffer severe rubber banding and latency issues, making matches unplayable. It’s the fact that progression makes no sense and is so heavily gated by randomness that you’ll probably never get rewards for the classes you enjoy the most.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is the most disappointing game of 2017 because EA took what should have been a winner with its graphics, presentation and sound design and utterly ruined it out of pure greed. That it accomplished this even after Star Wars Battlefront (2015) was so heavily panned is remarkably sad.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite may not have performed as well in sales as Capcom might have liked but the publisher continues to support the crossover fighting game. It’s announced a patch for next week that will fix a number of bugs relating to, for example, connection errors that occurred when performing continuous grabs in an online match.

Though most of the update’s features will release for PS4 and PC on October 16^th and arriving for Xbox One later, all of the character changes will go live across the three platforms simultaneously. Character changes include bug fixes for Dante, Captain America, Doctor Strange and Dormammu. You can check out the full patch notes below to see what’s changing with your favourite (or most hated) characters.

It’s also worth noting that characters like Black Panther, Monster Hunter and Sigma will be available on October 17th to those who purchased the 2017 Character Pass. You can purchase them separately for $7.99 each and receive their premium costumes as well.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite Patch

General

• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to block during the last frame of crouching block recovery.
• Fixed an issue that caused a connection error to occur when continuously performing successful grabs in an online match.
• Increased throw invincibility during air recovery from 3F to 5F.
• Fixed comboing into another combo using the Mind Surge throw.
• When an opponent has been hit by three special “grab” projectiles in a single combo, they will automatically be affected by a spiral hit stun, causing them to be invincible and sent into the air. Players can also counter tag out of these attacks.

Affected moves:

• Spider-Man – LP/HP Web Ball (including air versions)
• Frank – LK/HK Hammer Throw
• Can perform air recovery in eight directions when recovering from certain unique hits in the air.

Affected moves:

• Dante – Bee Hive
• Chun-Li – Spinning Bird Kick (including air version), Kikosho, Hoyokusen
• Chris – Sweep Combo
• Doctor Strange – Bolts of Balthakk

Characters changes (all platforms)

Dante: Fixed a bug when taking damage during Tempest that caused Dante’s position to change from the location where he took that damage.

Captain America

• Fixed bug(s) so that properties of moves without the shield match those with the shield. (ex: forward jumping during forward ground dash without the shield did not have dash momentum)
• Fixed a bug causing backflip (without shield) to be invincible from start up.
• Fixed a bug that caused his back ground throw to not do damage and had a shorter knockback distance.
• Fixed a bug where jumping forward during a back ground dash (with shield) had dash momentum.
• Fixed a bug that caused him to not face the opponent when behind them while activating Charging Star and Hyper Charging Star.

Dormammu

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to cancel Dark Spell: Creation after LK/HK Dark Hole with Flight.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to cancel Dark Spell: Creation after LK/HK Purification with Flight.

Doctor Strange

• Fixed bug where when there are 3 Graces of Hoggoth HP traps on screen and Flames of the Faltine is used from a higher position, the fired laser VFX disappears.
• Fixed bug causing one Grace of Hoggoth to remain on screen after activating Flames of the Faltine in certain situations.

In a year of great fighting games, it’s rather frustrating to see how disappointing Capcom’s Marvel vs Capcom Infinite turned out to be. A lackluster roster (seriously, no X-Men at launch?!), a story mode just for the sake of it and somewhat uneven gameplay changes make it the one of the least enjoyable fighters of the year. Regardless, it’s still a largely good game but when you compare to some of its predecessors, Infinite comes off as a halfhearted effort at best. Unfortunately, this kind of effort also shows in its effects in the art style and visuals.

Running on Unreal Engine 4 (the very same engine that was used for Capcom’s Street Fighter V), there seems to be minor improvements in visuals when one compares Infinite to Street Fighter V. The game uses an uninspiring art style and some weird character facial animations to get the “job” done. The game uses lower quality anisotropic filtering and lower quality alpha effects…and when you see games like Tekken 7 using the same engine and pushing the medium and genre further ahead, you have to wonder why Capcom isn’t able to do the same. Heck, even Injustice 2 which runs on a modified Unreal Engine 3 has better facial animations and particle effects than Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite. Hopefully the developers can get their act together for the next game, if it happens.

Regardless of its overall look and feel, one thing that Infinite does get it right is the frame rate. Across all console versions, Infinite runs at a rock solid 60 frames per second, although, the developers cut down the frame rate when you defeat somebody. This results into a rather jarring effect. Why did Capcom do that? It doesn’t create a positive effect on the presentation at all.

On the image quality front, we see the PS4 version leading the charge once again. Yes, it’s a native 1080p resolution compared to what looks like sub-HD on Xbox One. The PS4 Pro version on other hands seems like it benefits from improved resolution, better texture filtering and overall higher shadow effects. This makes the immediate details and the art style to pop out more than the base PS4 and Xbox One versions.

In the end, whatever platform you will play Infinite on, you are bound to receive a solid 60 frames per second (except the story cutscenes which run at 30 frames per second like every other fighter). Resolutions vary accordingly to the strength of each platform’s hardware. We will recommend Marvel vs Capcom Infinite only to the most hardcore fan of the series. For everyone else, there are better fighting games in the market.